Activist John Rees challenges claims that pro-Palestine marches threaten Jewish communities, accusing the UK government of targeting growing anti-war and solidarity protests.
“There Is No Threat to Jewish People”: Activist Debunks Protest Claims
Political activist and author John Rees isn’t playing nice with the narrative anymore. Speaking on Sky News on May 4, 2026, the Stop the War Coalition officer completely dismantled the government’s attempt to paint peaceful pro-Palestine protests as “hate marches” that threaten the Jewish community.
The government isn’t worried about the Jewish community’s safety, they’re worried about the millions of people calling out their complicity.
English Script:
John Rees: No threat whatsoever to the Jewish community from these marches. In fact, they are attended by thousands of Jewish people, often in a block in the Jewish block, who disapprove of the actions of the government and disapprove of the actions of the State of Israel. So there isn’t just one opinion in the Jewish community here. There are Jews, as there are in every community, with a different set of opinions. And many of them come on our march and of course, are completely safe, which they wouldn’t be if these were anti-Semitic marches, of course.
Interviewer: Well, but we’re speaking against the backdrop, while these marches have been going on for weeks and months, against the backdrop of arson attacks, stabbings, murders. And what Sir Michael Ellis, former attorney general, was saying there is that the cumulative effect on the Jewish community and the society’s response to the Jewish community, it just needs to stop, there needs to be a circuit break.
John Rees: Well, I and the problem with this kind of analysis is that it acts as if there’s a causal relationship between the demonstrations and the attacks on Jewish people. But as we now know from the background of the person who committed this latest, obscenity in Golders Green, actually, the connection is that they were mentally ill, that they were in the prevent program that very morning they’d attacked a muslim man, which isn’t is part of the news cycle, unfortunately, because it would frame it rather differently. There is a failure in the prevent program. There is a failure to protect people from these kind of individuals. But these kind of individuals are not attached to the Palestine movement. They are not attached to the marches. There’s no evidence that they’ve ever seen the march, let alone been on one, or that the organizers would for a second condone it. So this connection is completely fallacious. And what the Prime Minister and others are doing is weaponizing and instrumentalized the claims of anti-Semitism to try and marginalize and defeat their political opponents. Keir Starmer’s premiership is tanking and it’s tanking partly over his handling of the Palestine issue and his lost elections. Five independent MPs elected primarily on the Palestine issue at the last general election. He’s going to lose thousands of councilors, possibly, indefinitely related to this issue. And he should stand back and think whether it is a sensible use of his office to use claims of anti-Semitism against people who are absolutely not anti-Semitic, but are indeed anti-racist and try and lever himself out of a political problem by blaming us.
